Is SeaWorld's military promotion a veteran mistake?

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On Veterans Day, the red line between veterans and active-duty service members is anything but thin.

Take it from Vietnam War vet Denis LeClair, who received the Bronze Star for valor, the Purple Heart and the wrath of a divided nation after his homecoming 41 years ago as an Army specialist: Exit wounds don’t always heal.

Last month, LeClair, 62, stopped by the SeaWorld booth at the Miramar Air Show and was thrilled to find San Diego’s other American institution recognizing the military with a promotion called “Here’s to the Heroes.”

But what really stopped him short was that SeaWorld doesn’t offer veterans what it gives active-duty, activated or drilling reservists and National Guardsmen — one free admission ticket for up to four people each year.

LeClair’s disbelief didn’t stem from the fact he wouldn’t get in for free. It came from a sense that veterans are being disrespected by omission from a military program hailing heroism. An old wound of his reopened.

“I certainly feel that people who are part of the military nowadays get a lot of recognition that we back then never received,” LeClair said. “Fifty thousand, 60,000 died in Vietnam. Three thousand people have died in the Middle East so far. We had 3,000 dying in a month, you know, and I’m not saying that’s the measure, but times are different. People just have a different perception of everything, and I think that it’s slanted.”

LeClair sent SeaWorld an emotional email the Monday after the air show. Then he sent me the ensuing email chain last week.

He’s no less angry now.

“Based on your program, I don’t qualify as a hero?” LeClair wrote on Oct. 15. “Exactly what do you define as a military hero? Or do you misuse the term for publicity?”

He signed it as “a concerned veteran that wants to maintain the dignity of what a HERO really is.”

A return email came quickly from SeaWorld spokesman Dave Koontz, a retired Navy commander. Koontz said the program began in 2003, has benefited more than 1.5 million military members and their families and “is not, and never was, intended to be disrespectful to those who have served.”

Koontz said SeaWorld has considered expanding the program to include retired military personnel, disabled and non-disabled veterans, civilian employees for the Department of Defense and extended family members.

“Unfortunately,” Koontz wrote to LeClair, “our parks simply do not have the capacity to accommodate the combined large number of retirees, veterans and civilian DoD workers under this program.”

LeClair wasn’t satisfied. He knows how it might work because he’s eaten at restaurants that give discounts to veterans. He’s also been to Knott’s Berry Farm, which every November honors veterans with free admission for weeks, asking only that they produce identification to prove they served.

LeClair wrote back to Koontz, asking who exactly he considers to be heroes.

“We would never want to demean the dignity of any military veteran or retiree,” Koontz replied. “‘Here’s to the Heroes’ is simply the title of this program.”

But LeClair, who remembers being called a “baby killer” in the 1970s, believes in the significance and symbolism of words.

“It’s real clear,” he told me. “A veteran served out of the country, for this country, and so many came back with medals or lost limbs or things like that. Somebody who’s serving in the military here could be working laundry detail.”

I asked him: “Do you think some publicity would change this?”

“It would make me feel good,” he said. “It’d make a lot of veterans feel good because — I’m going to tell you what — a lot of them just remain silent like, ‘OK, I’ll take what they give me, and that’s it.’”

LeClair has a point. But so does SeaWorld.

Koontz, who suffered hearing damage in his left ear from flying helicopters, makes it hard to hold anything against SeaWorld, which asks all service members, past and present, to stand and be recognized at Shamu shows.

Koontz said SeaWorld San Diego gets questions and complaints from time to time about the “Here’s to the Heroes” program, but that LeClair is the first to criticize the title.

“The applicability of the program is to those on active duty,” Koontz said. “Anybody that’s in the military ... can be in harm’s way at any time during their career.”

He said the program’s scope is occasionally revisited by SeaWorld officials and that there has been no decision yet on keeping it next year.

Of course, SeaWorld is a major tourist attraction, and there are far more veterans than active-duty service members in America. But here in San Diego County, it’s a matter of degree; there are an estimated 235,000 veterans in the county and about 107,000 active-duty sailors and Marines.

LeClair didn’t put me up to this, but what if SeaWorld honored local veterans with free admission next year?